Comments | cereswunderkind: The Killing (US 2011) First Impressions

cereswunderkind

The Killing (US 2011) First Impressions

Apr 05, 2011 10:28

"Who Killed Rosie Larsen?" That's the question - and the answer is not the same as "Who Killed Nanna Birk Larsen?" just in case you were thinking of googling for spoilers :)

FW and I are among the half-million or so BBC4 viewers who sat mesmerised through twenty hours of Forbrydelsen, the slow-moving, convoluted and painstaking Danish crime drama ( Read more... )

Comments 2

dolorosa_12 April 5 2011, 10:04:36 UTC

I didn't watch the original Danish version of The Killing (although my boyfriend is currently sitting next to me watching his way through the last five episodes before they disappear from iPlayer), so I can't really comment on the specifics of the series, but I just find remakes so disappointing. Half of the reason the original shows are so excellent is that they're so deeply rooted in a specific place ('80s Sweden for Let the Right One In, Bristol for Being Human etc etc). And half the joy is discovering that place. I don't understand why Americans don't have that kind of drive to discover such places (or why American producers think that Americans don't).

cereswunderkind April 5 2011, 11:35:33 UTC

One of the main attractions of a show like Forbrydelsen to an English audience is its otherness. The show has many othernesses but of these, surprisingly, its location is probably the least important. Sarah Lund's and Troels Hartmann's Copenhagen could be any northern European city. More significant is the language - Danish seems to have fewer words shared with English than, say Swedish. (I appreciate you probably know much more about language than I do). When watching Wallander in Swedish we were regularly spotting words like "barn" and identifying them as having the same root as "bairn", to give just one example. Less so here. That difference is clearly lost in translation. But the show has other differences. For a start, the pace is slow and deliberate. Nothing is quickly wrapped up. CSI it ain't. Secondly, it pays great attention to the family of the victim. The plight of the Birk Larsen family is examined and explored quite unsparingly. They don't simply wail in the morgue and then disappear until the trial ( ... )